


before you fall asunder

by kimaracretak



Category: CSI: NY
Genre: Aromantic Stella, F/F, Female Friendship, Friends With Benefits, Lesbian Aiden, Mentorship Feelings, how did these become the csi ny hills i'm dying on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 07:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3348674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of Mac and Danny's latest fight, Stella takes Aiden dancing. Set late S1.</p>
            </blockquote>





	before you fall asunder

Aiden's hovering outside her door. Oh, Stella's sure Aiden would never actually call it _hovering_ , not when she's gone to the trouble to bring along a case file to pretend to study and arrange herself so carefully against the wall that she could pass for casual to anyone walking by. But Stella isn't walking by, and this _is_ her office wall that Aiden is leaning against, and _she_ will certainly call it hovering.

At first she just smiles, content to finish up her paperwork and then maybe catch up with her on her way out, enjoy the benefits of living close enough to someone else on her team to split a cab home with. But Aiden is not just hovering, she's staring, and after five minutes of this Stella starts to think something's wrong.

She flips her last file shut, crosses her office and studies Aiden from the doorway for a moment. “You might be more comfortable reading that on my couch, you know,” she says lightly.

Aiden flinches, tries very hard not to look like she was either hovering or staring, and what might have been amusing in other circumstances is offset by the look in her eyes. “Sorry. I should...” She gestures vaguely down the hall with her folder, but makes no move towards leaving.

“Come on. I'll make us coffee.” Stella inclines her head back towards her office, and Aiden follows the request-not-a-question without hesitation. She sinks into the couch cushions as Stella busies herself making the coffee, fingers worrying the edges of the folder.

Neither of them speak until Stella hands over the mug of coffee and says “I'm thinking this isn't about a case.”

“No.” Aiden sighs, runs her hand through her hair. “I don't know. Maybe.” Stella waits, biting her lip as Aiden fidgets with her coffee and resisting the urge to do the exact same thing. It was the unquiet hands that first drew her to Aiden, so similar to her own, and she's spent an awful lot of time recently wondering what those fingers would feel like on her lips, circling her breasts – “I need advice,” Aiden adds suddenly, bringing Stella's thoughts back to the present.

“Okay,” she says slowly. “From your boss or from a friend?”

“Both. I think.” She falls silent again, and Stella sips her coffee, watching. “What do you do when you don't – you don't distrust your partner, but you're wondering if you should?”

There's plenty of things she's not saying, things like _Mac_ and _Danny_ and _Tanglewood_ and it's a question that deserves a serious answer, but the first thing that comes to mind is _I'd take you out for a drink and ban us from talking about the job for a night_ and it's a mark of how tired she is that that's the answer she gives. She regrets it as soon as she sees the surprise on Aiden's face. “Aiden, I'm sorry, you deserve a real answer to that.”

Aiden's voice is low and tight when she asks, “Did you mean it, though?” Stella licks suddenly dry lips and seriously considers her answer.

“Yeah.” It's what she wants, for herself and for Aiden, and she knows her friend well enough to know that Aiden wants it – or at least could use it – as much as Stella could. Whether Aiden was in a place to accept that –

“I think that's exactly the answer I needed.” Aiden's smile is half relief and half something Stella can't quite name and all hopeful.

 

*

 

Stella lets Aiden pick the club, and she's glad of it the moment they walk in. It's just crowded enough to let them be anonymous, not so packed that either of them will spend the night flinching towards their absent sidearms at any stray touch.

Aiden wastes no time ordering them margaritas, and Stella wastes just as little drinking hers as fast as she can. Aiden raises an eyebrow and grins at her over the rim of her own glass. “That sort of day for you too?”

Stella grimaces, doesn't bother trying to recover a smile. “That sort of month.” She drums her fingers on the bar as Aiden finishes her drink at a slightly more sedate pace, glad that they're both, for the moment, content to sit in silence as the crowd moves around them. Stella raises her hand for another round and watches the lights reflect off the liquor bottles.

“Buy you a drink?” The voice startles both of them, and the guy it's attached to doesn't look more than seventeen. Aiden raises her eyebrows and gives him the same cold blank stare she's taken to giving Danny whenever he opens his mouth. Stella resists the urge to dig out her badge and demand his ID, settles for a possessive hand on Aiden's thigh and a “We're fine, thanks.”

The boy grins lazily, tosses a couple of his glow sticks on the bar. “Have fun, then,” he says, wandering off in search of someone more receptive.

Aiden barely waits until his back is turned before laughing. “Okay, Stel, should I be flattered or offended that I just got hit on by a guy who's probably not even legal?”

“That depends,” Stella smiles mischievously around the rim of her glass. “Is 'barely legal' your type?”

Aiden laughs even harder, then, and that sets Stella off too, because neither 'barely legal' nor 'guy' is anywhere near Aiden's type. And then they're half-collapsed on each other and one-maybe-both of them are hanging on the bar for balance, fingers tangled together and the bartender glaring daggers at them from the other side of the room. It's not the sort of behavior Stella usually expects from herself after only two drinks, but it's Aiden, and it's the end of the longest week from hell that they've had in a while, and _oh_ , she remembers faintly as Aiden tugs them both to their feet, _this is what living is._

“Hey, lady,” Aiden whispers in her ear, and Stella laughs again, Aiden's regular greeting for her so out of place that it seems the only possible thing either of them could have said in that moment.

“Hey yourself,” she says, twirling a lock of Aiden's hair around her finger and trying not to think about how much she wants to kiss her, undress her, do all the things with Aiden that the boy with the glow sticks wanted to do _to_ her. But she settles for _dance with me_ , and doesn't protest at all when Aiden takes the lead.

Stella can feel herself unspooling in Aiden's arms as they dance, all the parts she's hidden away from the irradiated fallout of Mac and Danny's latest fight peering around their barricades thinking: _oh. so this is what breathing is._ Aiden's breath is warm on her cheek, her body comfortable and solid behind Stella and Stella allows her eyes to drift shut, lets herself imagine, just for a minute, that everything else – the club, the lab, the petty fights – has fallen away and it's just her and Aiden, alone in their safe bubble of sanity and summer drinks. She leans back, hears Aiden's soft laugh as Stella's curls tickle her neck, revels in the security of Aiden's hands on her wrists, on her hips, feather-light across her stomach where her shirt doesn't meet her jeans.

It's summer, and she's out of the lab, safe and laughing and so, so grateful to Aiden for allowing her this freedom. “Thank you,” she says softly, so softly that Aiden has to lean even closer to hear her. And when Aiden's hair falls over Stella's shoulder, when Stella half-twists in her arms to see her face when she says _thank you_ again – then it's the most natural thing in the world for Aiden to close the few centimeters between them and kiss Stella, sweet and hot and wanting, the most natural thing in the world for Stella to turn all the way around and tangle her hands in Aiden's hair and pull her even closer. ( _oh,_ she thinks dimly, somewhere beyond Aiden's thigh between her legs and her hands under Aiden's shirt, _so this is what freedom is_.)

But then another couple brushes past, and reality closes around them again. “Sorry!” Aiden gasps. She jerks as far away from Stella as she can on the crowded floor, hands raised in apology, and Stella shivers at the loss of contact. “Stella, God, I'm so sorry, I forgot...” Stella can fill in all the things Aiden thinks she's forgotten: _Forgot that you're my boss. Forgot all the reasons this was a really bad idea._

“Aiden, Aiden, shh.” Stella cuts her off before Aiden can articulate any of those possibilities. Aiden's shining eyes are nervous under the neon as Stella tugs her over to what passes for quiet in the club. She opens her mouth again, then, but – “I'm not sorry at all, Aiden.”

“You're not?” Aiden doesn't sound as surprised as Stella expected, which makes her think that Aiden's felt some of this same vast, desperate wanting that's settled in her over the past few weeks.

“No,” Stella pulls her closer, skims her fingers along the top of Aiden's jeans and, god, she can't remember the last time she's gotten this wet from just one kiss. “And I'd really like to do it again.”

Aiden doesn't look nervous at all anymore, not now; hungry, though, as she kisses Stella again and Stella gasps into her mouth, proud as she kisses her way down Stella's throat and grins up at her through lowered eyelashes, exhilarated as she says _come home with me_ and Stella says _yes_ before Aiden's finished asking.

 

 


End file.
